> [Oliver Frank] > > Here we go again. The health bureaucrats just don't learn. > > When HIC Online was to be introduced, rather than fund the > devlopment of a single API that could be used by all vendores > of billing software, the Commonwealth instead paid a number > of billing software vendors each to develop their own > interface to the HIC system.
Actually they have technically created a single API, in that it is an interface based on specific HL7 transactions. These are now fairly well defined, based mostly on the Australian RSD standards, tho some deviations have been required from that. > Now we see that NSW Health is going down the same wasteful > path. How will NSW Health decide how many and which billing > software vendors are to receive public money to enable their > particular users to connect to the Healthelink system? I could be wrong, but I believe they tried to get the participation of all vendors used by practices in the chosen region. > Will GPs who are not using one of the packages favoured by > NSW Health (other than Best Practice) therefore not be able > to connect to the Healthelink system? Where is the equity in this? Maybe you should contact NSW Health about exactly which vendors they approached, and which of those vendors chose not to participate (altho that could be commercially sensitive information). I don't think that any vendors were 'favoured' over others, tho, initially. I wouldn't call the electronic health record project 'wasteful'. I hope that it will prove useful in enhancing shared health care services, although given the small sample group, this programme may serve only as a trial of how things could be. More importantly I believe this has given NSW Health much useful experience in coordinating a variety of software vendors in working towards a single goal, the sharing of health information, moves toward single unique patient identifiers etc. Personally I think you should cast aside your sceptical no-government-group-could-do-anything-useful attitude and try to see what good may come from this, such as all the current participants maybe being able to envisage a brighter future with a more cohesive health information service, and people moving one step closer to developing a sensible non-proprietary non-wasteful approach to a shared EHR. It will happen one day, and some of these projects will be first stepping-stones towards that achievement. -- This is just my opinion, I speak not for MedTech, NSW Health, or anybody else involved. And yes, I surprise myself with the optimism generated by this project, after all my years in health IT and the many less-than-hugely-successful projects I have seen money poured into. -- Les Ferguson Business Analyst MedTech Software Ltd. _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
